Last Resort
by AdAbolendam
Summary: Phil Coulson isn't dead. He just not here. If May kept telling herself that, she could believe that there was a way to bring him back.
1. No Time For Comfort

It had been almost two weeks. Thirteen days and eleven hours since the old Roxxon Plant went Chernobyl and swallowed Phil Coulson, Leo Fitz and Robbie Reyes in a blast of quantum energy. Two weeks of dead ends, mounting pressure, and looks from her colleagues that bordered dangerously close to pity. Melinda May was about to crack.

* * *

After an hour spent combing every inch of the facility, she finally let herself accept the conclusion that Mack had reached almost immediately: her teammates were gone.

 _Not dead_ , she reassured herself. _Just not here._

Mack could not meet her eyes when she emerged from the subterranean stairwell, covered in dust and sweat. That was fine. She didn't need him to. She did not do comfort. This wasn't the time for consolation anyway. There was work to be done.

"Morrow," she announced.

"What?" Mack asked.

May grimaced. She might as well have woken a sleep-walker. He hadn't looked this lost since Bobbi and Hunter retired.

"Eli Morrow," she clarified. "He's the one that's responsible for this."

Mack's eyes narrowed as grim determination set in.

"So we find him," Mack concluded. "And make him pay."

"He can pay after he's told us what he did to Coulson and Fitz," May corrected.

"And Robbie," Mack added.

May rolled her eyes, but did not bother to contradict him. The Ghost Rider was what started this whole mess. If she never saw him again, she wouldn't lose any sleep.

"What about the Director?" Mack asked.

"What about him?" May said, walking past him toward the quinjet. "He's not here. We've got a quinjet with enough fuel to take us to Rio and back. And I doubt Morrow's made it that far."

Mack followed her up the ramp and closed it behind him.

"He's gonna be pissed that we took his plane without reporting in," Mack muttered.

"Let him be," May spat.

She had the engines fired up and the wheels off the ground before Mack could make another attempt to change her mind.

The Director was annoyed when May, Mack and their tactical team reported back to base five days later, but it was May who was pissed. Five days and as many dead ends meant all of their leads on Eli Morrow had gone cold. He hadn't been in contact with Gabe or anyone at the prison. He had not been back to his old home or the Momentum Energy Facility. SHIELD's facial recognition software did not yield a single hit on security footage or any form of social media.

Morrow was another goddamned ghost.

"He's a scientist," Mack had pointed out when all their ideas were exhausted. "He thinks strategically. That's what makes him such a formidable adversary."

May had shot him a look hearing the defeat in his tone. He was losing his edge. Fitz's disappearance had been a hard blow to him; that much was obvious. She clamped her jaw shut to stop herself from snapping at him. They had to keep it together. They weren't going to find anyone by moping.

In the end, she had conceded that he was right. Morrow was a scientist. They needed to think like him to figure out his next move.

They needed Simmons.

So it was with that resignation that they had returned to the base.

After the perfunctory ass-chewing from their esteemed leader, May had exited the Director's office with a head full of steam, marching toward the lab at a near-sprint. Simmons was slouched over a metal stool at her work station, barely holding her head up.

"Agent May!" Simmons greeted her.

The poor woman looked up from her desktop with red-rimmed eyes and May felt a debilitating stab of pity. She hadn't spoken with Simmons directly since the incident. Mack had graciously offered to break the news of her partner's disappearance as soon as she was back within cell-range. Simmons looked like she hadn't slept since.

"Simmons," May nodded.

She stifled the instinct to ask about her well-being or to simply march her to her bunk and stare at her until she succumbed to exhaustion. She would be alright. She could sleep when their team was whole again. They all could.

"Any progress?" She asked instead.

"Oh," Simmons rolled her eyes. "Of course not. I knew there wouldn't be. There's no possible way to reverse Terrigenesis on a non-Inhuman. You can't bring someone back to life who has been transmogrified into a block of carbon, but the Director insists—

"What are you talking about?" May asked. "What does that have to do with finding Morrow?"

"Morrow?" Simmons repeated. She blinked a few times, trying to refocus. "Oh! Nothing, sorry… Didn't Daisy give you my report?"

"I haven't talked to Daisy," she said.

 _For a number of reasons._

She had called a few times over the past five days, but May let the calls go to voicemail. She had enough on her plate without delving into the rabbit-hole that was her former-protégé's current mental state. Daisy was on-base. She was safe. That was all she could ask for at the moment.

"Well," Simmons began hesitantly. "I don't—I haven't had any more luck locating Dr. Morrow than you or Mack. Daisy and I have been working on some new methods of targeting unusual bursts of quantum energy, but it's slow-going. In the end, we're not even sure if it will work, assuming Dr. Morrow's experiment was a success."

May frowned.

"Okay, so what's our next step?"

"That's just it, Agent May," Simmons's voice began to waver. "I don't really know. Fitz was the one who understood the engineering and physics side of things. So much of what we know about quantum physics is theoretical and my knowledge barely scratches the surface. If Fitz were here…"

"But he's not," May said firmly. "You are. Whatever you need, Jemma, we can get it for you. Just tell me what you need to fix this."

Simmons's eyes spilled over and she wiped her cheek with the sleeve of her stained lab coat.

"I don't know where to start," she admitted. Something like a strangled laugh bubbled up from her throat as she fought the stream of tears.

"Jemma…"

"A wave of energy like that could have theoretically sent them into any point in time or space, or dimension. Or they might still exist on this plane, but just in an intangible state," Simmons explained between sniffs. "But I think we are ignoring the much simpler explanation. Whatever kind of energy it was they were exposed to, it was massive. Even without their—their bodies, it's much more likely that they are—

"Don't."

Simmons's head jerked up at the quiet interruption.

"May," she began. "I'm sorry, but I think we may have to accept this."

The older agent stared at her for so long that Simmons recoiled a few inches as if preparing herself for an attack. It was a testament to her state of mind that May felt a small swell of satisfaction from her reaction. Maybe she had a reason to be afraid. It took every ounce of May's self-control to keep her hands from shaking.

How _dare_ she give up so easily? How _dare_ she tell her to "accept" this?

If she had any idea what she was asking, she would have kept her mouth shut.

"If the situation were reversed," May said at last. "Fitz would never have written you off so easily. You should know better, Jemma. You owe him that much."

Simmons could not have looked more stricken if May had slapped her.

"I—I," she stuttered.

"You will figure it out," May continued. "And I will be there to help you when you do."

Apparently robbed of her capacity of speech, Simmons only nodded, looking down at her hands.

Again, that pull of pity threatened to overtake her. With a few words, May had reduced the competent young woman Simmons had become into that shy, uncertain girl that had boarded the Bus four years ago. She had to leave before she lost her composure. Simmons was an agent. She would recover and she would fight to get their team back.

It's what they did.

In her haste to evacuate the lab, she almost ran into Mack's chest.

"Hey," he said, looking over her head to where Simmons sat staring blindly into space at her desk.

"What's up with Simmons?" He demanded. "Did you say something?"

May scowled.

"Nothing that she didn't need to hear," she answered. "She's exhausted. Probably hasn't eaten recently. Would you…?"

"I'll take care of it," Mack cut her off, breezing past her.

"May?" He called after her. "Take it easy on her okay? We need to keep the team we've got left."

May stalked off without looking back.

They could all take it easy once Coulson and Fitz were home.


	2. Acceptance

**In which Simmons finally puts her foot down.**

* * *

The next day passed without a word from Simmons. May walked by the lab a few times and saw her huddled over her desk, but if she sensed May watching her, she didn't bother to look up.

 _She'll figure this out_ , May told herself. _She has to._

Unbidden, the image of a metallic ambigram on the face of a leather-bound book swam into her mind's eye. If there were any clues to be had on her team's fate, the _Darkhold_ would hold the answers. Even if she could not understand the book's secrets, surely Simmons, with her background in science, would be able to reverse-engineer Eli Morrow's experiment with the _Darkhold's_ help.

 _"If this book is half as powerful as everyone thinks it is, then getting it out of here and hiding it somewhere safe has to be our top priority."_

"Damnit, Phil," she muttered to herself.

Of course, he was right. As far as they knew, everyone who had read the _Darkhold_ had succumbed to psychosis or had just gone power-mad. No matter how much she wanted them back, she could not subject Simmons to that kind of evil. She had asked too much of her already.

May was startled out of her musings by the trademark scuffing noise of Daisy's boots coming down the hallway. Without a look back, she made a hasty retreat toward the gym, fleeing from her own nagging guilt as much as Daisy herself. She couldn't face her right now. There was nothing she could do or say that could make either of them feel better.

* * *

After a week with no new leads, May agreed to go out on assignment. She and her strike team successfully extracted and relocated two Inhumans who were holed up in an abandoned warehouse in Detroit and being tracked by the Watchdogs. The mission was a breath of fresh air that gave her something else to focus on. Coulson and Fitz might be missing, but the security leak that allowed the Watchdogs to target registered Inhumans was far from being solved.

May returned to base after the last assignment feeling drained enough that she might actually get a full night's sleep only to find Simmons waiting for her outside of her room. Even through the haze of fatigue, she could tell that something was wrong. In her left hand, Simmons held a thick manila envelope half-concealed behind her back.

"What that?" May demanded by way of greeting.

Simmons swallowed.

"I flew to Aberdeen yesterday," she answered. "To tell Fitz's mum the news."

May busied herself with the keycode to her door and flicked on a lightswitch.

"That must have been difficult," she said neutrally.

Simmons followed her inside the room and lingered uncertainly at the entrance before letting the door close behind her.

"We've decided to hold a memorial service this weekend."

May shrugged out of her jacket, letting out a non-committal hum as the only indication she had heard.

"Agent May," Simmons said. "The Director contacted Coulson's attorney and apprised him of the situation."

That grabbed her attention.

May leaned against her chest of drawers and raised a very pointed eyebrow at her young colleague. There was only so much that the Director could have disclosed about "the situation" to anyone without the proper security clearance.

"Well, he told him that Coulson was MIA," Simmons conceded. "You are listed as the executor of his will."

She held out the manila envelope and May scowled at it like it was a coiled snake ready to spring. Simmons sighed and placed the document on the bedside table.

"Anything else?" May asked coldly.

"Yes," Simmons replied. "The Director wants to know when we can hold a funeral service for Agent Coulson. He has colleagues and friends that need closure. Mace would prefer it was done sooner rather than later."

A humorless scoff followed that pronouncement.

"I'm sure he would," May muttered. "You can tell the Director that he can have a funeral when Coulson is dead."

"May…"

"That's final, Jemma," she stated, turning her back to indicate that the conversation was over.

Simmons was having none of it.

"You think you're the only one that finds this hard to accept?" Simmons snapped. "You think you're the only one hurting? Mack hasn't left on assignment since the incident. He's spent every waking moment holed up in the hanger fixing anything he can get his hands on so he doesn't have to think. Daisy can't tear herself away from her computer trying to work on this new algorithm to track Morrow. And you still haven't bothered to talk to her, by the way. And I…"

"What Jemma?" May asked. "Go on."

Simmons cheeks were flushed and her eyes shined with tears. She had kept a lot bottled up over the last few weeks.

"You have no idea how hard it was for me," she continued. "To admit that Fitz might be alive and I have no way of getting him back. You don't know what's it like to feel like you've been hollowed out, like you're only half a person without…"

May felt her face burn, but said nothing.

"I would do anything to have him back," Simmons said. "But the truth is, whether he's really dead or not, he might as well be. Because I have no idea how to reverse what was done. I have to accept that."

The two women regarded one another in silence. Simmons brushed her fingers over the envelope that contained Coulson's will and turned to leave.

"Maybe you can accept it," May whispered. "But I buried Coulson once already."

Simmons stopped at the door, her hand frozen above the panel.

"The casket was empty, but I didn't know that. Not until Fury told me weeks later. Next thing I knew, he was back in my office, alive, and telling me to come back out into the field with him."

Simmons closed her eyes, damming the fresh flood of tears.

"I won't bury him again, Jemma," May concluded. "I can't."


	3. Left Behind

There was no one in the cargo hold of the _Zephyr_ at three in the morning. Standing empty in the cold night air that seeped through the cracks in the roof of the base's landing bay, the plane was the only place in the Playground where May knew she would not be disturbed.

Well, other than her room, perhaps. But there was something pathetically desolate about getting drunk in one's own bedroom with nothing but four walls for company. And May was about one sip short of being completely hammered.

Juggling a half-empty bottle of whisky and the manila envelope with uncharacteristic gracelessness, she managed to enter the key code to the plane's cargo hold and stumble her way onto one of the crates in the middle of the room. Sitting the bottle and envelope down on the makeshift table, she reached under the tool shelf behind her and pulled out one of the glasses that Coulson had concealed the last time they had shared a drink between assignments.

May blew the dust from the glass and poured herself another round.

There was no sound in the hanger but her own breathing.

Less than a month ago, he had sat across from her, smiling ruefully as she chastised him for getting caught in his most recent attempt to bring Daisy in. Now, she stared into the empty space in front of her as if she looked hard enough, he would reappear, grinning, as if nothing had happened.

"Oh yeah," she chided herself. "This is much less depressing than drinking alone in your room."

The unopened envelope caught her eye again and she glared at it for a full minute before sighing and picking it up.

"Alright, Phil," she said. "What did you leave me? If it's your Captain America comic collection, I swear I'm donating the whole stack to Goodwill. You know I never understood your obsession with that crap…"

May took out the will and let her eyes skim over the preamble, trying not linger on specific clauses: "in the event of my death", "in the event of mental incapacitation", "in the event I am trans-located to Asgard and/or an equivalent world or dimension…" ("Really?" May asked aloud. "Good God, Phil…")

After reading over the miscellaneous items that he left for the members of the team, she reached her name towards the end of the document.

"To Melinda May, I leave my family home in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. As she will no doubt have little interest in settling in the rural Midwest, she is free to sell the estate and use the proceeds as she sees fit."

"Moreover, it is my wish that Melinda May take my place as the Director of SHIELD. She has been my closest ally and friend in the Agency and is the only person I trust to take the directorship in my absence. May has the loyalty of her subordinates and teammates. I have no doubt that under her leadership, the new SHIELD will continue to thrive and grow to achieve the international recognition it has held in years past."

The letters on the page swam and blurred as her eyes began to water. Flipping back to the first page, she searched for the date. The will hadn't been revised for almost a year. He had written this back when SHIELD was still in the shadows, still his to give away.

May collapsed into herself with her head in her hands.

"I don't want any of this," she whispered. "I don't want your house. I don't want SHIELD. Just come back."

 _"It's good to have a moment, just us."_

 _"You've always got my back."_

 _"You're the only one I trust."_

 _"…my closest friend and ally…"_

All of his words echoed and thundered in her memory until it was nothing but a deafening roar, screaming at her, chastening her for falling short, for not finding the answers to rescue him when he needed her the most.

May jumped to her feet with a guttural yell drowning out his voice in her head. She grabbed the half-empty glass from the table and threw it across the room, relishing the crash of glass on steel as it shattered against the far wall.

A muffled gasp came from somewhere behind her and her back stiffened.

She was not alone.


	4. Lesser of Two

**Daisy stages an intervention of sorts...**

* * *

She stood at rigid attention, waiting for the intruder to reveal themselves. She hoped it was someone on her Strike Team. They respected (or feared) her enough to leave quietly and not say a word to anyone.

"May?" A voice asked from the darkened hallway. "Are you okay?"

No such luck.

The door to the cargo hold had been left cracked open. May remained standing, staring at the mark the glass had left on the wall. The door swished quietly on well-oiled hinges as Daisy pushed it open.

"Did I catch you in the middle of target practice?"

May had to hand it to the girl, her voice didn't even shake a little in spite of the discomfort she must have felt. But then, Daisy's discomfort threshold had probably ratcheted up significantly over the past six months.

"He left you Lola," May said, by way of an answer.

"What?"

Daisy crossed the room and stood beside the box littered with papers and a manila envelope.

"Coulson left you Lola in his will," she clarified. "There's practically a manual's worth of instructions and caveats in here on how to take care of her. I don't know if it's really worth it."

"That's what you're doing in the middle of the hangar at 3:00 in the morning?" Daisy demanded. "Getting drunk and reading Coulson's will?"

"What are you doing here, Daisy?" May asked wearily. The events of the very long day were starting to weigh on her.

"I couldn't sleep and I saw you the security footage," she explained. "I thought we could talk. I thought… I just wanted to check on you."

"I'm fine, Daisy."

Daisy rolled her eyes at the mark on the wall.

"No, you're not."

May didn't answer. She sat down hard on her crate and set about organizing the papers and stuffing them back into the envelope.

"You're giving up," Daisy realized.

"I'm not…" May stopped herself. She couldn't do this anymore. She was tired. "I don't know, Daisy."

Daisy crouched down on the crate across from her and placed her hands palms down on the table, as if laying down arms to negotiate a cease-fire.

Poor girl.

She still thought of herself as something dangerous, as the enemy. Even if she was not the instrument of her teammate's disappearance, then she was the conduit through which misfortune and tragedy surged.

"May, we can't give up hope," she said.

"It's not your fault," May replied.

"What?"

"What happened to the team," May continued. "I know you want to blame yourself. God knows, it's what you do. But we stumbled onto Morrow's trail before you came back. It was only a matter of time before we caught up to him. What happened at Roxxon wasn't because of you. Whether we get them back or not, it isn't your fault, Daisy."

Daisy pulled back her hands from the table and folded them in her lap. She stared back at May, tears running freely down her face, unabated.

"Then why have you been avoiding me?" She asked, voice finally breaking. "If it's not my fault, why have you run in the other direction every time I turn the corner?"

"Because…" May paused, hating herself for what she was about to admit. "Because I knew if I talked to you, I wouldn't be able to lie."

"Lie about what?"

"About them, Fitz and Coulson. And Reyes," she added, as an afterthought. "I've been telling Jemma, the Director, and everyone else, that they are alive, that we'll find them. But the truth is…"

"You think they're dead." Daisy whispered.

May smiled sadly and shook her head.

"I don't know."

The words were mangled by the gravel in her voice, but Daisy heard them all the same. Tears fell from May's eyes, painting her cheeks with unfamiliar warmth and she watched as Daisy's pained expression turn to one of confusion and horror.

May almost smiled at the reaction. She could sympathize.

It was the feeling every child had watching their parent fall apart. Having that awful realization that they were no more in control of the world than you were. That they could be hurt. Or fail.

Or give up.

Daisy crossed the space between them so quickly, May barely had a chance to react before Daisy had her thrown arms around her neck in a hug like a vice.

"It's going to be okay, May," Daisy assured her. "It'll be okay."

As awkward as it was to be comforted by her former student, May didn't try to break away. She felt Daisy's heart hammer against her chest. It was the most real and comforting thing she had felt in weeks.

"We don't know that they're dead," Daisy continued. "If there was some way to _prove_ that they didn't die in that accident, maybe we could find a way to bring them back."

The muscles in her back grew rigid and Daisy released her grip.

"What is it?" She asked.

May did not answer. She meant what she said. She wasn't any good at lying to Daisy.

"May?" Daisy tried again. "What are you not saying?"

She looked down the girl she had once thought of as a daughter and saw in her face a reflection of all of the pain May had locked inside. She wasn't her child, but she had still inherited all of her flaws—the compulsion to shut everyone out, the self-doubt, the inability to shrug off the crushing guilt of every misstep, every mistake. Daisy felt the loss of all of them just as acutely as May did.

If the _Darkhold_ could bring them back and take away that pain…

 _"If this book is as powerful as everyone thinks it is…"_

And just like that, Phil was in her head again, saying the same damn thing he had said every night since the accident.

 _"…Getting it out of here and hiding it somewhere safe is our top priority."_

But she had promised him something else long before she agreed to guard the _Darkhold_.

 _"No matter what happens, I'll take care of you."_

Before Eli Morrow, or the _Darkhold_. Before he had ordered her to put a bullet in his head as he slipped closer and closer to psychosis.

 _"I'll find a way."_

Before he even showed up in her office with nothing but a scar and a head full of false memories as evidence that he had spent the last month hovering between life and death.

Two days after his funeral, she had made him a promise.

"May, what's going on?" Daisy asked again.

 _"You're the only one I trust,"_ his voice reminded her once again.

One last chance for her to rethink what she was about to do.

 _Sorry, Phil_.

May turned to Daisy and said the words before she could regret it.

"I know a way," she told her. "I know how to get them back."

* * *

 **Next Up: May's promise and Simmons encounters the _Darkhold..._**


	5. The Promise

**Just a little backstory and some calculated bad decisions...**

* * *

 _Four Years Earlier_

May had trudged into Director Fury's office with tangled hair and whiskey on her breath. Fury had not blinked as he took in her disheveled appearance and did not pause before he launched into the truth behind her ex-partner's death and resurrection. She seethed with anger at his audacity in keeping her in the dark, and for torturing Coulson back to life even as he begged to die.

But she kept silent.

Any attack on his character would have been the basest form of hypocrisy.

As much as she hated Fury in that moment, she hated herself more.

She hated herself for every time she rejected Coulson's invitations to come back out on assignment. She hated that she let his call go to voicemail the day before the Battle of New York. But most of all, she hated herself because she would have done it all again: stood numbly by as his casket was lowered into the ground, drank herself to sleep every night, listened to his recorded pleas for death, she would have done all of it—if she could have him back in her life.

Everyone else had given up on her after Bahrain.

Her mother scolded her for not picking herself up by her bootstraps and not getting back into the field "where her talents wouldn't go to waste." Her father's pleading voice mails asking her to return his calls had stopped. Andrew signed the divorce papers and respected her wishes not to contact her.

Phil Coulson was the only one who ignored her repeated brush-offs and her vehement attempts to push him away. The occasional text, the odd phone-call, the unexpected visits to her apartment when he was between assignments; only when she heard of his death did she realize how much these small gestures had been tying her to reality.

He had saved her from herself and she had not been there when he needed her the most.

She left Fury's office with her word that she'd have her recommendations for Coulson's team on his desk the following morning. In the relative privacy of her car in the Triskelion Parking Deck, she leafed through the file he had handed her.

A black-and-white photo of her former partner's face greeted her, lifeless and still on a metal table in the morgue.

She put her palm over the image, but it was already locked in her memory, a permanent reminder her refusal to help had cost him.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there, Phil. You'll never know how sorry I am," she whispered. "But I won't let this happen ever again. I'll always have your back, whatever it takes. I promise."

It did not matter that he was not there to hear her. If there was any way to get him back, she would take the risk.

* * *

 _Present Day_

Everyone in the lab jumped as May dropped the leather-bound manuscript onto the table.

"Take it easy," she chided. "Simmons, are you sure you want to do this?"

Jemma Simmons eyed the book and pressed her lips together.

"I'm sure," she said. "I told you, if there was any way to get them back…"

"Hey, I want them all back too," Mack agreed. "I really do. But, I've seen people that have been affected by this thing. It hasn't worked out well for them. That's why it's important that you understand the risk. There's no pressure if you want to back out."

Simmons raised an eyebrow and scoffed lightly.

"The hell there's not," she murmured.

"There's not, Jemma," Daisy assured her. "None of us wants to you lose your sanity to get our team back. We'll find another way."

"There is no other way," Simmons argued. "We've all been over this from every angle. It's this or nothing. I'll do it. Fitz would do the same."

May flushed, feeling the weight of her earlier accusation hang in the air.

"Well, that's why May and I have gone over some 'security protocol,'" Daisy said. "You take a look, try to find what you need to reverse Morrow's experiment, and write down whatever you need."

"Then, one of us will take the book and lock it away for good," May said.

"Away from me, you mean," Simmons prompted.

May confirmed her suspicions with a nod.

"I don't like this," Mack said in a low growl. "What if keeping her away from the book isn't enough? What if she goes crazy trying to find this thing again like Morrow?"

"Please, Mack, don't sugar-coat it for me," Simmons said tightly.

"If what we've managed to piece together from Morrow's experience at Momentum Labs is true, then he was in contact with the book and the experiment for months," Daisy said. "SHIELD records of the _Darkhold_ indicate that its power grows with prolonged exposure to a specific individual."

"Lovely," Simmons remarked.

"So, the less time you spend with it, the better," Daisy concluded.

May's touch on Simmons's shoulder was barely perceptible, but it commanded her full attention.

"If I think that it's affecting you, we'll shut it down," she told her. "But there are no guarantees, Jemma. If you want to back out, it's alright. It's your decision."

Simmons managed a weak smile and nodded.

"Alright," she said, facing the _Darkhold_. "My first time with sorcery. I guess I get to be Hermione after all."

The others watched as she lifted the binding and flipped through the first few blank pages of the book.

"I don't understand," she said, shaking her head. "There's nothing… oh…"

Out of the corner of her eye, May saw a blank page fill with spidery calligraphy, charts and diagrams. She looked away before she could read a word.

"Oh my God," Simmons gasped. "It's—this is amazing."

"Yeah, I'm sure it's a great read," Mack quipped. "Does it say anything about Morrow's experiment? Something that needs a reactor like the one at Roxxon?"

"Yes," Jemma whispered. "I think this is… yes! This is it. Pen! I need a pen! And paper!"

Daisy grabbed a ream of paper out of the closest printer and handed her a pen. Simmons began scribbling furiously, muttering to herself.

"Yes… and then… if we could bypass the override… then…"

Mack and May shared a look over her head. Daisy paced in front of the desk, arms crossed, casting worried glances in Simmons's direction.

"I think… that's about it…"

May placed her hand on the corner of the manuscript.

"Simmons?" She asked. "Are you finished?"

"Almost…"

Daisy looked up at May and shook her head.

"Jemma, I'm going to close the book now," May said firmly.

"Okay… I think… I think that's it."

May snapped the book closed and handed it to Daisy without another word. Daisy sprinted from the lab like a relay racer with a baton.

A mournful gasp came from Simmons's lips and she collapsed in the chair behind her.

May crouched down until she was at the young scientist's eye-level.

"Simmons?" She asked. "Jemma? Agent Simmons, look at me."

The unfocused glaze of her eyes disappeared and Simmons jerked to see May so close to her.

"Simmons?" May asked again. "Are you with us?"

She nodded and smiled unreservedly.

"Yes," she answered. "I'm here. I know now. I know... We've got to get back to Roxxon. I know how to bring them back."

* * *

May glanced once more at her watch and groaned.

Twenty-two hours.

She had been waiting for twenty-two hours while Simmons, Daisy and Mack rebuilt, reconfigured, and recalibrated the equipment at the Roxxon Facility to reverse Eli Morrow's experiment. It had taken her less than ten minutes to see that her extremely limited experience with electrical engineering was more of a liability than help. She had retired to the cockpit of the quinjet to wait until she could be of use.

So far, the only thing she had done was pick up and pass out sandwiches and pizza.

She was close to nodding off when Daisy came bounding up the ramp, rattling metal grating and startling May fully awake.

"Need another coffee run?" She called over her shoulder.

"No," Daisy announced. "We're ready."

May found herself jogging to keep up with Daisy's manic pace on the way back to the facility.

"So, Simmons seems to think that Coulson, Fitz and Robbie were transported by the blast to another dimension, a world right beside ours, but not visible," Daisy explained.

"I know what 'another dimension' means, Daisy," May said tiredly. "I _do_ work for SHIELD."

"Right, well—hold on," Daisy stopped abruptly, holding her hand out to break May's stride. "We shouldn't go any closer. Simmons and Mack are setting up a remote device so we can trigger the reactor from here. They're almost done."

May sighed and crossed her arms. She was getting impatient. All of this waiting made every doubt and fear she had about this whole scenario grow and multiply. She wanted it done. One way or the other, she needed this to be over.

"The book made a lot of references to a place called The Dark Dimension," Daisy said.

"Sounds charming," May said.

"Yeah, well, Simmons thinks Morrow tapped into this dimension because it's the source of some super-strong quantum energy, something called 'Dark Force' or—

"'Zero Matter,'" May finished with her.

"You know about it?" Daisy asked.

"Heard about it," May murmured. "Stories from senior agents, back from before my time."

"What did you hear?"

"Nothing good," May said simply. "So, Simmons thinks our team was sent to this Dark Dimension when Morrow used its power in the experiment?"

Daisy nodded.

Seconds ticked by as the women waited in the dark for Simmons and Mack to emerge from the compound.

"Those stories you heard, about Zero Matter, they talked about where it came from, didn't they?" Daisy asked.

May glanced at her out of the corner of her eye and nodded.

"And the agents? Did they ever send anyone there? To the Dark Dimension?"

Another nod.

"Did anyone ever come back?"

"One man came back," she answered.

"What happened to him?" Daisy prodded.

May sighed. There was no answer to that question that wouldn't scare her.

"They were just stories, Daisy."

The pounding of boots echoed up from the concrete innards of the Roxxon facility and Simmons and Mack emerged, shaking with nervous energy.

"We're ready!" Simmons cried, holding a remote detonator aloft.

"Okay," Mack said, crouching down in the grass. "The energy we are dealing with is very volatile, so we only get one shot at this."

Simmons, May and Daisy knelt beside them.

"There will be a shockwave," Simmons explained. "And then, if everything was calibrated correctly, Fitz, Coulson and Robbie will be sent back to exactly where they were when the initial blast occurred."

"Any idea what kind of shape they will be in?" Mack asked.

Simmons frowned and shook her head.

Mack sighed.

"Okay, Simmons, you do the honors."

Simmons bit her lower lip and flipped the switch on the detonator.

Night turned to day as the plant erupted in a cloud of blinding, white light. Then, like a dying star collapsing in on itself, the blast of energy seemed to implode, leaving the four agents blinking in the dark.

* * *

 **I was so excited about the Agent Carter refs in the last episode, I had to throw in a few of my own.**

 **Thanks for reading, you guys! Final installment coming soon!**


	6. Out of the Darkness

"Shouldn't the lights have come back on?" Mack asked.

He, May, Daisy and Simmons stood in the grassy field, holding their breath, listening for any signs of life from the darkened compound.

"Give it a second…" Simmons answered.

At her word, a low hum echoed from below them as the generators rumbled back to life. Seconds later, a sickly glow of fluorescence spilled onto the field from the facility's open door.

The four agents exchanged anxious looks.

"Come on, we've waited long enough," May announced. "Let's get our team back."

* * *

Although she did not expect to meet with any resistance in the reactor room where she had last seen Coulson, May rounded the corner with a sharp pivot, ICER at the ready. The bright light in the chamber nearly blinded her and she had to squint against the harsh glare.

Once her eyes had adjusted, she realized that she was alone.

There was no one in the room except for herself.

"No," she whispered.

Simmons said he would be here! She said he would be transported back to the last place she had seen him!

She lowered her weapon and slumped against the wall.

All the anticipation, the planning, breaking her promise to keep the damn book hidden- it was all for nothing.

"I'm sorry," she moaned. "Phil, I'm so sorry."

From the far side of the room, a faint groan answered her, so hushed she might have imagined it.

May's head jerked up and she lept to her feet, following the noise across the chamber. When she reached the end of the antiquated control panel, she saw him.

Phil Coulson.

He was laying on his side with his knees pressed into his chest, his back against the panel. His eyes were clamped shut and his clothes were soaked through with sweat.

But he was here. And he was alive.

"Phil?" she whispered quietly, kneeling beside him.

"Mmm," he answered. "Lights. It's bright… too bright."

"Okay, okay, I'll take care of it."

She ran to the far wall and switched off every light she could find. The reactor was the only remaining source of illumination in the room.

May sprinted back to where she left him and crouched down again. She touched a hand to his head. He was cold. Too cold.

God, what had he been through?

"Phil?" She asked again. "Are you okay?"

With a quick motion that made her jump, he grabbed at her hand as she moved to pull it away. His cold fingers wrapped around her palm. He pressed it to his cheek, warm skin against his frozen flesh. She felt the corner of his mouth turn up under her fingers, even as his eyes remained closed.

"May," he whispered.

"Yeah, Phil," she said. "It's me."

He squeezed her hand so hard, her bones ached from the pressure. But she didn't flinch.

"I knew you'd find me," he said.

May could only smile in reply.

* * *

Within the hour, Daisy, Mack, Simmons and May had managed to haul Fitz, Robbie and Coulson onto the quinjet.

Fitz seemed to be in the worst shape of the three. Mack had to carry him on to the jet. Once on board, he refused to put the young scientist down. So the craft lifted with Fitz lying across Mack's legs and his head in Simmons's lap. If he was embarrassed with the amount of attention he was receiving, he wasn't showing it. He fell asleep with a grin, holding both of Simmons's hands in his.

After Coulson had gently extracted himself from Daisy's tight embrace, she contented herself with chatting with Robbie. When Coulson made his way up to the cockpit, he couldn't help but smile as he listened to her try to pump the poor mechanic for every detail she could about the so-called "Dark Dimension."

May's posture stiffened as he sat down next to her.

"How are you feeling?" She asked, not taking her eyes from the instrument panel.

Coulson sighed.

"That's a loaded question," he said finally. "I feel… different."

She nodded, declining to comment.

"We'll make sure that you all get a full work-up at the base," she assured him. "Simmons has the medical crew on stand-by."

"How long were we gone, May?"

"Three weeks."

He let out a long breath.

"Did it seem longer?" She asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I don't think time existed where we were. It was just… darkness."

May nodded. She knew that much. She had heard the stories.

"How did you know we weren't dead?" He asked.

"I didn't," she said simply.

She knew what was coming. He was going to thank her for not giving up on them. She had to stop him before he got carried away.

"There's something you need to know," she said. "About the way we brought you back. I know you said it was important to keep it hidden, but the only way we could think of to reverse the experiment was to use—

"The _Darkhold_ ," he finished for her. "I know."

He met her sharp look with a shrug of resignation.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," he said. "Simmons replicated the experiment that Eli Morrow used to put us in that place, he got that knowledge from the _Darkhold_ …It was the only way."

"I put her in danger when I let her read it," May disparaged.

Coulson glanced over his shoulder to where Simmons sat combing Fitz's hair with a free hand and chatting with Robbie and Daisy.

"She looks okay to me," he said.

"You said you trusted me to take care of it, and I—

"I did," he interrupted. "And I do. I trusted you to use your best judgement. And you judged that it was worth the risk."

May swallowed.

"My judgment may have been compromised," she admitted.

"You had to make a tough call, Melinda," he said. "If the situation were reversed. I would have done the same thing."

She gave a soft snort and searched him appraisingly.

Coulson was broken, beaten, and yet still standing, in a manner-of-speaking. She wondered if Robbie and Fitz would have made it out of the darkness without him. What had he said or done that had kept them going?

He always looked after his own, with no regard to personal safety or consequence. It was why they all needed him.

It was why she loved him.

"Yeah, you would have," she murmured at last.

"Is the book safe now?" He asked.

"It's hidden," May confirmed.

"Good," he said. "We have to make sure that it stays that way. I've seen the kind of dark power that that book controls. Nothing good will happen if it falls into the wrong hands."

* * *

Washington, DC

The next morning, Dr. Holden Radcliffe tripped over a parcel left on his doorstep on his way to get the mail. The box was heavy and rattled his kitchen table when he managed to haul it inside and set it down.

A white sliver of a note peeked out from between the creases in the brown paper. He wrested it from the folds of the hastily-wrapped package and tore into the envelope. The handwriting on the letter was so slanted that it was nearly indecipherable, as if whoever had written it had been forced to compose the note in a hurry.

"Dr. Radcliffe,

This parcel contains a book unparalleled in value. I believe it may contain several answers that you and I have been searching for re: biotech development, et al.

The provenance of this manuscript is uncertain and we must use the utmost caution when using it.

Do not mention that you have this book to anyone, especially anyone associated with SHIELD! Do not open it until I can arrive. I will try to sneak away at the earliest opportunity.

I will explain more when I see you.

Sincerely,

Jemma Simmons"

* * *

 **Thanks for reading, guys!**

 **Man, this season has been full of angst. What do you think the chances are the Winter Break cliffhanger ends on a (slightly) happy/hopeful note?**

 ***Sorry for not including more Daisy & Coulson, alleemaria! I'll work on it in the future!***


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